Has anyone been to this grove? We've been to Mariposa and Toulumne and want to check this one out. With 6 days in the park is it worth it to use a whole day on this hike? Guide book says the hike is 2.5 each way on an old road. We have a 9 and 5 year old who can march pretty well (9 year old did Sierra Pt when he was 8). Just looking for a little advice. We need to see some big trees.

The Merced Grove is the smallest of the three groves, about 20 large trees but there are lots of smaller ones. The one thing nice about this grove is that there are not as many people going there so you have more solitude to enjoy them. So if you want to see big trees without crowds this is the grove to go to. The road you will be walking on is one of the original carriage roads and there is a old cabin there that was a ranger station so there is a bit of history to experience. Because there is not a lot of signage or fences, you will get a experience of what the groves were like in the past.

It is closer to 3 miles round trip and unless you spend tons of time in the grove, it is not a all day hike. There is a, depending on your source, a 500 or 600 feet elevation gain to get back up from the grove.

Has anyone been to this grove? We've been to Mariposa and Toulumne and want to check this one out. With 6 days in the park is it worth it to use a whole day on this hike? Guide book says the hike is 2.5 each way on an old road.

Huh?

Seriously, I would throw away that guide book if it gave such erroneous information (unless it meant 2.5 KM each way, which is close enough to the actual mileage).

From the trailhead, the Merced Grove is just a 3 mile ROUND TRIP (with about 500' of total elevation gain). Plan on spending no more than 3 hours (4 hours MAX) on that day hike. If you're visiting Yosemite in the summer, do it in the morning when the weather is cooler and the trail will be less crowded.

Has anyone been to this grove? We've been to Mariposa and Toulumne and want to check this one out. With 6 days in the park is it worth it to use a whole day on this hike? Guide book says the hike is 2.5 each way on an old road.

Huh?

Seriously, I would throw away that guide book if it gave such erroneous information (unless it meant 2.5 KM each way, which is close enough to the actual mileage).

From the trailhead, the Merced Grove is just a 3 mile ROUND TRIP (with about 500' of total elevation gain). Plan on spending no more than 3 hours (4 hours MAX) on that day hike. If you're visiting Yosemite in the summer, do it in the morning when the weather is cooler and the trail will be less crowded.

.

You're right. The guidbook is says 3 miles RT. The reader needs glasses. Thanks to all for the scouting reports. This one looks totally doable for the whole family. In my city, Reno, there are dozens of sequoias that were planted 50+ years ago. The skyline in pierced by perfectly symetrical cones of baby big trees. Many of them are over a hundred feet tall. In the wild they take a much more organic shape.

Merced Grove is a nice 1/2 day trip, but you might enjoy Tuolumne Grove more. It's a bit larger and easier to reach as the "trail" (really a segment of the Old Big Oak Flat Road that was closed to autos in 1990) is paved, plus it's a shorter distance.

On the other hand, if solitude is what you're after, Merced Grove is the one. The first part of the trail uses a dirt fire road of relatively recent vintage. Where you meet the Old Coulterville Road (about 3/4 mile from Highway 120), you follow it downhill to the grove. This was the first road built into Yosemite, and it's showing its age -- this part of it has been closed to auto traffic since the early 1950s and was never paved, so it's a bit more of a difficult hike than the one into Tuolumne Grove. There's a ranger station in the grove and it's an impressive sight seeing all these mammoths towering over you. When I was last there (late afternoon), i had it to myself. But judging from the often crowded parking lot at the trailhead, it's a fairly popular hike, so it may be much busier in the morning/midday.